The Black Ascot

by Charles Todd

  But where had Barrington been between 1910 and 1914? And where had he gone after the Armistice? Back to whatever hidey-hole that had already served him so well?

  If that was true, what had brought him back to England now?

  Jane Warden called to him from the stables as he made his way down the drive. He stopped to wait for her.

  “Mr. Rutledge? I’m glad I caught you. Would you like to see Blanche’s room? At my house? It was always hers. I considered asking you last evening, but I felt it was an intrusion, somehow, to take a stranger there. I’ve been thinking it over, and I decided that if it helped you at all to find out what happened to her, she might want me to reconsider.”

  Surprised but pleased, Rutledge said, “I’d like that very much.”

  She smiled wryly. “Shall I drive you? Or will you take me?”

  “My motorcar is already here, at your disposal.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  He got out to open the passenger door for her, but she was already there, an independent woman. Still, she thanked him as he shut her door.

  They went on down the drive, and she said, “Do you know Coniston Water?”

  “I think I can find my way there.”

  “Good. When you’re closer, I’ll give you directions to the house. It’s across the lake.”

  For the first part of the journey, Jane Warden was silent. Rutledge wondered if she was already regretting her generous offer. But then she said, almost as if musing aloud, “I don’t know why I left it as it was when she last came to visit. I’m not particularly sentimental. I’ve made the house my own, since my father died. I knew he wouldn’t mind. I expect Blanche was such a part of my past that I wanted to keep it safe. A happy time, always summer in my memories. But then of course it was. Except for her last visit.” She fell silent again.

  When she didn’t go on, Rutledge prompted her. “What was it about that last visit?”

  She shook her head. “It was winter, of course. And she was marrying again. But it wasn’t that. It was something about her. I never quite put my finger on what it was.”

  “From what you’ve said, I can’t help but wonder if she really was in love with Fletcher-Munro. Or saw in him an escape from her own memories,” he probed.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes one sees things differently at the time because of one’s own emotional state. Perhaps I was the one at odds. Not Blanche. Perhaps that’s the real reason I invited you to come with me. To help me sort it out.”

  “I didn’t know Blanche. I don’t know if I can help you.”

  Jane looked out her window. “Perhaps that’s it, perhaps I don’t want to know.”

  She shifted in her seat. “Perhaps I’m just confused.” She brightened suddenly. “There. Do you see it across the lake? Far different from Dalemain House, isn’t it? But I love them both.”

  He slowed to look across the gray, white-tipped water. Halfway up the hillside was a long rambling house set among gardens and trees. Pale in the pale light. It surprised him. He’d expected her to live in something older, more in keeping with Dalemain.

  She directed him around the lake and up the long road that led to the side of the house. They got down, and she stood there for a moment, staring up at it. “My grandfather built it, but my father extended the gardens. I’m afraid I’ve done little to change the exterior. This way.”

  She led him around to the door, and a housekeeper was already there, holding it open for her. “I didn’t expect you, Miss. Nor did I recognize that strange motorcar coming up the drive. But there’s a fire in the sitting room, and I’ll have tea brought up straightaway,” she said as they entered.

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Rhodes. I didn’t know until the last minute that I’d be coming. But I’m not staying. I’ve brought Mr. Rutledge here to show him the house. And tea would be lovely.”

  Mrs. Rhodes acknowledged Rutledge with a nod, then left to arrange their tea.

  Jane said, “She’s a dear, but she fusses over me too much. Let me take you up to Blanche’s room. Then we’ll sit by the fire.”

  The bedroom midway along the passage was cold, no fire in the grate. But the windows looked out on the lake with a glorious view. The trees were winter bare, the sky pewter, but he stood there looking out for a moment before turning to see the room itself.

  It was feminine. Pale lilac on the walls, with white and lilac in the drapes and the coverlet on the bed. The carpet was dark green. The furnishings were older, a dark wood with black trim on the drawers and the armoire doors. He could almost picture Blanche staying here, drawn by that view.

  Jane opened the armoire. “She kept some of her things here. Mostly clothes for walking in the gardens or sunning on the lawns. Things she didn’t need in London.”

  Rutledge looked at them. Large hats to keep the sun off her face, practical clothes and day wear, even two gowns for entertaining, but he was more interested in the small paintings on the wall and the desk against the wall beside the windows, where the sitter could write but only needed to turn a little to see that view.

  The paintings were watercolors of the various lakes. They were beautifully done and framed. He recognized Ullswater and Bassenthwaite, Coniston and Buttermere.

  Over the bed was Wastwater, empty and dark and mysterious.

  “My mother’s paintings,” Jane was saying. “Blanche had them framed in Grasmere and hung here. I offered to let her take them with her, but she said they belonged here.”

  He crossed to the cherry desk. On it was a photograph in a silver frame, and he recognized the two girls smiling at the camera. Fourteen? Sixteen? Blanche was the prettier of the two, but Jane’s was the more interesting face.

  “May I?”

  She nodded reluctantly. He sat down in the chair and began to open the side drawers.

  Ink, sketching pencils and pens. A small leather diary with addresses, most of them in London, a few in the area. Jane’s and Dalemain’s among the latter. Calling cards. A packet of postcards with views of the various lakes and sights around them. A tablet of drawing paper, partly filled with sketches of the area.

  He’d left the center drawer for last, as it was least likely to hold anything private. And he was right. Stationery, pens, envelopes, a small brass container for stamps. He took them out one by one, and under these was a pretty paper with a pattern of pink rosebuds, protecting the wood. He’d seen the same paper in the bottom of the armoire where Blanche’s shoes were kept.

  Jane was saying, “There was an owl in the woods beyond the gardens. Blanche was quite fond of it. She found it as a fledgling with a hurt leg, and nursed it back to health before setting it free. Whenever she was here, she’d go looking for it. She named it Oscar.”

  He hardly heard her. He’d run his fingers across the paper and felt something underneath. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it was the first indication that Blanche had secrets. A dance card? But he couldn’t feel the thickness of a ribbon.

  Turning toward Jane Warden, he said, “Could you bring the lamp over here? I think there’s something written here.”

  “Of course.” She went across the room to the lamp on the bedside table, found matches, and lit the wick. It brightened the gray daylight from the windows.

  While her back was turned Rutledge swiftly lifted the paper, fished out what was under it, and had it in his inner pocket before Miss Warden had brought the lamp to him.

  He pretended to examine the rosebuds, as she held it high so that the light shone into the drawer, then he shook his head. “Stems and leaves. Sorry.”

  Miss Warden laughed. “I’d have been surprised if there had been writing on the paper. It didn’t sound like something Blanche would do.”

  “No,” he agreed, and put the contents of the drawer back in it as carefully as he’d found them.

  “I’d hoped you might learn something helpful,” she said as she blew out the lamp and turned toward the door.

  Rutledge took one last look at the splendi
d view, and said, “She must have been a private person.”

  “More a person with nothing to hide,” she said, leading the way downstairs. “I think our tea is waiting.”

  Rain was pounding against the dining room windows as they finished their tea and prepared to leave.

  The journey to Dalemain House seemed to be twice as long going back as it had coming to Coniston Water, at least to Rutledge, almost feeling whatever it was he’d taken from the desk burning a hole in his pocket. Miss Warden was quiet much of the way. “I feel I’ve kept you from your work, on rather a wild-goose chase,” she said as they rounded the end of the lake, apologizing. “I’d been torn, you know. Wanting to preserve everything just as it was, because it was so personal a memory, and wanting to find something unexpectedly helpful for you, for Blanche’s sake. Well, so much for good intentions.”

  He almost told her then that he’d taken something, then thought better of confessing. Whatever it was, Blanche had hidden it from her dearest friend, nor had she taken it with her on her last visit to the Warden home. And that alone was intriguing.

  It was late when they reached Dalemain House, and the rain was heavy, with fog in places here and there. Jane Warden insisted that he stay a second night, out of concern for the treacherous roads. He thought she was feeling responsible for keeping him by suggesting seeing Blanche’s room, and so he agreed with her that going on would be foolish.

  But it was well after dinner before he could go up to his room, for she had suggested not changing for the meal.

  When at last he’d shut his door, and taken off his coat, he reached in the pocket and drew out his discovery.

  It was a torn section of a photograph, as if someone had not wanted to keep any of it but this one part.

  He could almost feel Hamish at his shoulder, watching, as he turned it over.

  The original photograph must have shown people in the foreground, the intended subjects, but they had been discarded. What was left was a man in the background, and at first Rutledge wasn’t sure just who it was because the face wasn’t all that clear.

  Much younger than in any of the other photographs he’d seen, including the one here in this house, during the war. The man was probably no more than eighteen, dressed casually in an open-neck shirt and light trousers, as if he’d just finished a game of tennis. There was a towel in his hand, and his head was slightly turned as he smiled at someone out of sight of the camera.

  It was Alan Barrington.

  7

  Hamish said, “Ye canna be sure. No’ aboot this photograph or yon convalescing officer.”

  Rutledge answered him silently. Who else could it be? All right, I grant you, I could be wrong about the officer in the clinic here. Lieutenant Maitland. But I don’t believe I am. And there’s the photograph I found in a desk used by Blanche Thorne. Why did she hide it under the paper, why did she tear it, keeping one man’s likeness, but not those of the other people in the missing half? No, more than half is missing. This was deliberate.

  “Ye should ha’ asked yon woman. Instead, ye took it withoot her knowledge.”

  But there had been good reasons for that.

  He remembered what Blanche had told her friend about love, and being safe.

  Had Fletcher-Munro ever guessed that he might have been second choice to Barrington?

  Was that why he’d been sure it was Barrington who had meddled with the motorcar’s brakes?

  He put the torn photograph away carefully, in his notebook, and went to bed. Rain beat against the windows, and in the end he fell asleep.

  The next morning over breakfast, he casually asked Jane Warden, “Did you own a camera? I saw the photograph of you with Blanche in the frame on her desk. Or was it hers?”

  “I don’t believe I ever saw her with a camera. Which isn’t to say she never had one. I didn’t have one until 1914, but I was never very good at it.” She smiled ruefully. “A few photographs I took here in the lakes turned out rather well, but then you can hardly go wrong with a lake or a fell. They tend to stay where they are, waiting for you. Even flowers for the most part, unless there’s a bit of breeze. People tend to move about. Or perhaps it was my fault that I often lopped off heads.”

  He laughed with her.

  “Mark did have a camera, I think,” she told him as they were finishing their breakfast. “But I don’t remember who took that photograph of the two of us.” She frowned. “Odd that I can’t recall.”

  When Rutledge came down later, preparing a second time to leave Dalemain, Miss Warden said, “I feel quite guilty for having led you astray about Blanche’s room. But I’ve enjoyed your company too. I hope you’ll come again when the family is in residence. You’d like them.”

  “Thank you.” He gave her his card. “If you think of anything about Blanche or Mark Thorne that might be useful in learning more about what happened to her, I hope you’ll write.”

  “I think you must know her now as well as I do,” she said with a wry smile. “She was such a lively person, and when she was gone, she left an empty place in my life. No one else has quite filled that place.”

  He understood what she was saying. There were men he’d served with, officers as close as brothers. Most of them hadn’t come back, and one had killed himself after writing an apology to Rutledge for not being able to carry on.

  What he was thinking must have appeared in his face, because Miss Warden said, “Yes, you do understand, don’t you? Good day, Inspector Rutledge. I won’t say good-bye.”

  “Good day,” he replied and went around to where he’d left his motorcar. The skies were clearing and the wind was sharp. Great patches of blue sky were appearing in the east, out over the sea, and by the time he’d reached the main road south, the sun was bright.

  He had one more stop to make before traveling back to London. He had purposely left it to last, because he’d wanted to hear what the living had to say about Blanche Thorne.

  It was time to visit the village where she’d grown up. It wasn’t far from St. Albans, and he found it fairly easily after stopping the night halfway there.

  St. Mary’s was a fairly prosperous village, and the Richmonds had come here soon after the Restoration, inheriting land and a manor house from a cousin who had died in the 1665 plague. The family had become the local squires in the course of time, and Blanche’s parents were well thought of.

  This he’d learned from a pretty, talkative woman who served lunch in the inn off the square. He’d arrived a little after two in the afternoon and had the dining room to himself. He’d opened the conversation by asking who owned the handsome manor on the far side of the church.

  “They always let Vicar hold the Harvest Fest in their gardens, the Richmonds did, and everyone looked forward to that. I remember it well. But after their deaths, it had to be held at the Vicarage.”

  “Who lives in the house now?”

  “There was no one to inherit, you see, and so the house was sold to a London banker, wanting a place in the country. You’d have thought he might carry on the tradition, but he didn’t. Neither he nor his wife take much interest in the village. They just like to entertain in the house on weekends. As if they were grand, and belonged here.”

  The woman’s name was Elizabeth, he discovered, and she lingered by his table, set in the front window of the dining room. It looked out on the street, and she pointed to a tall house across the way. “That’s where the steward lives now. He sees to the property, of course. You don’t find Mr. Holland taking a personal interest in the way that Mr. Richmond did. Mrs. Richmond, now, would invite the village children for tea, twice a year. On her daughter’s birthday and again at Christmas. I loved going there.”

  “You know quite a bit about the family.”

  “I should. I’ve lived here all my life. And when there were houseguests, my mother would be asked to help with caring for them. Once she was lady’s maid to the wife of an MP who came to stay for a fortnight. She also helped nurse Mrs. Richmond
when the babies died. I didn’t know at the time, of course, but the Richmonds had lost three children before their daughter Blanche came along. And so she was their darling. What’s more, she was the least spoiled child you could imagine.”

  “What happened to the other three?”

  “Stillborn. My mother always called Blanche’s mother ‘poor Mrs. Richmond,’ and I never knew why until I thought to ask her one day when I was fourteen or fifteen. After all, they lived in the manor house. They seemed anything but pitiable to me. That’s when she told me, and made me promise never to say anything to Blanche.”

  “You said the house was sold. What happened to Blanche?”

  “She was killed in a terrible motoring accident. In London, that was. We were all so shocked when the news came. She’d only been married a little before that—it was her second marriage. You’d have thought she’d have been married here, like the first time, but her husband was an important man, and the village church wasn’t good enough for him. Her father had a heart attack at the news of Blanche’s death and died two months later. Mrs. Richmond followed him within the week. I remember my mother crying at her funeral. Blanche meant everything to them, you see. Such a tragedy.”

  He ordered an apple tart, to keep her talking, and asked if Blanche had been buried here in St. Mary’s.

  “With her parents next to her. It was thought her husband would die as well. He’d been terribly injured in the same crash. But he recovered. He still lives in London, I think. We seldom hear news of him. I quite liked Mr. Thorne. Her first husband. He and Blanche came quite often to visit. I thought they were well suited. I only saw her second husband once, when he came to meet her family. He was still in hospital when she was brought home to be buried. Even so, I didn’t much care for him.”

  “Why not?”